AT PENPOINT
The replacement of KP CM Ali Amin Gandpur as PTI KP President may seem more symbolic than anything else, but it takes from him the party office that made him CM in the first place. It is possible that this is the first step by which PTI founder Imran Khan will sack him as CM, despite denials having been issued.
The KP CMship looms large for the PTI, more so than for the traditional mainstream parties, the PPP and the PML(N). That is because the province is a bastion, which it has ruled since 2013, with the last election resulting in its strongest showing so far. KP proved the springboard from which the PTI achieved national power in 2018. It catapulted the PTI’s first CM, Pervez Khattak, into the National Assembly, where he became Defence Minister in Imran’ Cabinet. Khattak was accompanied from Peshawar to Islamabad by Ali Amin Gandapur, who had been a member of his Cabinet as Revenue Minister, and who became Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan Affairs Minister. Thus Imran, by making him KP President when Mahmud Khan left the party along with Pervez Khattak, was merely returning him to the province. And when the PTI swept the province in the 2024 elections, Ali Amin became CM.
One of the ministers he inducted in his Cabinet was Shakeel Ahmad Khan from Malakand. Shakeel was a veteran, having been Ganadpur’s colleague in the Khattak Cabinet from 2013 to 2018, where he was a special assistant to CM, with the Social Welfare portfolio. After the 2018 election, he was inducted into Mehmood Khan’s Cabinet, succeeding to Gandapur’s Revenue portfolio. When Gandapur became CM, he inducted Shakeel as Communication and Works Minister. He left the Cabinet in August 2024 after having been inducted in March, alleging that his department’s secretary had released Rs 6.87 billion to contractors without his knowledge in May and June, keeping 10 percent to 20 percent as commission, including Rs 200 million paid to Gandapur and Rs 100 million to ‘influential circles’, He resigned from the Cabinet, though he remains an MPA. He was supported in all of this by his MNA, a certain Junaid Akbar Khan. Gandpur had earlier appointed him a Focal Person. He was sacked from that when he threw his weight behind Shakeel, and was also removed from all his party posts.
This created ripples in the KP PTI, and would have created a national stink had the rest of the country not been distracted by the travails of Imran Khan, and the party’s convulsive efforts to get Imran released. Gandapur made himself important to Khan by placing himself at the forefront of the efforts to get him released, including a meeting with COAS Gen Asim Munir.
However, that effort seems to have fizzled out, with Imran having refused to continue with the talks with the government until the formation of a judicial commission on the 9 May 2023 and November 26 incidents. Speaker Ayaz Sadiq still fixed a date for the committee’s next meeting, at which the government would present its reply to the PTI’s demands. The PTI team did not turn up, and that was that.
By replacing Gandapur in his party office by someone who is openly an opponent, Imran has signalled his displeasure with him, but has not really worked to replace him. There is a very delicate balance at play, for Junaid is not a replacement, not unless he was to find a seat in the KP Assembly. Another option would be to have Shakeel become CM. As there might have to be a placeholder until Junaid found a seat, Shakeel could play that part.
If Imran wished to keep both Junaid and Gandapur within the party, he would have to tread very carefully, and even then find it impossible. It is even possible that he took the step knowing that Gandapur would probably have to go.
The inability of the PTI to hang on to its KP CMs does not simply mean that it has problems in its home province, but that its selection process is flawed. At present, there is no process, strictly speaking, beyond Imran’s whim, with personal loyalty at a premium. That does not seem to be working, and whatever the respective fates of Gandapur and Junaid Akbar, the party is bound to lose out, as contenders concentrate on getting Imran’s ear rather than performing.
Gandapur has developed a reputation for being one of the loudmouths favoured by Imran from the time when, as the Kashmir Affairs Minister, he was banned from taking part in campaign rallies in the 2021 AJK election after remarks against Maryam Nawaz, who was not yet Punjab CM. However, it was after his spell in Sukkur Jail (where he cut off his trademark long hair) that he rose to prominence within the party.
He has easily been the most recognizable figure within the party, particularly because he was now CM of the PTI’s most important province. He was thus seen as crucial to the struggle to free Imran. The failure to get him out thus led to him being criticized. He and Sher Afzal Marwat seem to be at loggerheads, with Marwat apparently chafing at him. Marwat has been accused of having divided loyalties, and of being a creature of the agencies. Interestingly, the same is said about Gandapur, especially since he appeared in such a prominent role in the PTI’s reaching out to the Establishment. This trading of allegations gives rise to the suspicion that being an intelligence creature is merely a gratuitous insult in PTI circles, not to be given more importance than an accusation of stinking in a school playground, being meant to hurt, but having nothing to do with truth.
However, the PTI should review the way it operates. While Bhutto was alive, the party was not limited to Sindh, as it is now. After him, it does have a sort of stranglehold on Sindh, just as the PTI does in KP. However, the PTI must note that it seems to have a high attrition rate for KP CMs. Even if Gandapur lasts out the term, he has probably been too damaged to last. This contrasts with the PPP, which has had two Sindh CMs over three terms, both winning re-election. Among its earlier CMs, Jam Sadiq Ali, Mustafa Jatoi and Mumtaz Bhutto did desert it, but none of the later ones have done so. It could be contrasted with its ultimate loss of Aftab Sherpao in KP.
However, the PPP’s losses took place after a generational shift, when those mentioned were transformed from Bhutto’s acolytes to his daughter’s ‘uncles’. Nobody deserted him during his lifetime. Of the four PTI men to have been CM (three in KP, one in Punjab), only Gandapur is still in the party, and how much longer that will be, cannot be predicted.
Gandapur and Junaid Akbar are men whose entire political career has been in the PTI, as opposed to both Pervez Khattak, who had been a provincial minister under the PPP, and Mahmud Khan, who had both been in the PPP. This reflects the growing maturity of the party. It was a little like the PPP, which in the 1870s was dominated by figures who had joined it from other parties, mostly the Convention Muslim League.
However, at present, the PPP consists mostly of people who have known only one party. Perhaps most important, the PTI still consists of first-generation members, whether or not they started somewhere else, or whether the PTI was their first political platform. The PPP has a lot of second-generation members. Indeed, Chairman Bilawal Zardari Bhutto is third-generation. His father Asif Zardari, now 72, is not just the founder’s son-in-law, but also the son of an MNA. The Sindh CM, Murad Ali Shah, is the son of a previous CM, Syed Abdullah Shah.
The inability of the PTI to hang on to its KP CMs does not simply mean that it has problems in its home province, but that its selection process is flawed. At present, there is no process, strictly speaking, beyond Imran’s whim, with personal loyalty at a premium. That does not seem to be working, and whatever the respective fates of Gandapur and Junaid Akbar, the party is bound to lose out, as contenders concentrate on getting Imran’s ear rather than performing.
